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Friday, October 26, 2012

Vancouver: La Brasserie

merci danka

:West End:

It was my sister's birthday on Tuesday. Her friends, Leroy and Taro, took her out for dinner and I tagged along. La Brasserie is a quaint French-German restaurant owned by two brothers. The menu has duck confit and wiener schnitzel, steak frites and schupfnudel.

Quaint really is the right word to describe this 35-seat venue of cozy wooden seating and dim lighting.

Service was okay. I'm tempted to say it was sub-standard but no one else seemed to mind. If I'm in the minority, I can accept that perhaps I am more demanding than the company I keep.

The starters were great - we had fresh oysters, truffle poutine and warm olives and nuts. I like warm nuts. But I didn't even notice them, Leroy did. He must like his nuts warm too...which is a good thing otherwise we wouldn't have ordered them.

House bread - oysters - truffle poutineNo nuts. We ate them before I could snap them.

Taro had the best dish of the night. I'm inclined to say it's La Brasserie's star. Every restaurant has one - their winningest dish if you will:

The most amazing rotisserie chicken.

The chicken was spectacular. It comes with an amazing confit garlic jus on a bed of braised red cabbage. A must order.

Leroy had the steak onglet which he said was "good". Now if he hadn't prefaced that by telling us about some of his recent meals, I might take that as is. But after the enthusiasm he used to describe his other meals, I feel like "good" is less. You see if you were to ask him to tell you about Zen's benny, things go from "good" to a very animated description fit with gesticulating hands and a drooling audience. See why "good" is likely "alright".

My sister had the burger, which was indeed alright.

I had the mussels and fries. They didn't make any top ten lists but there was nothing wrong with them. Then again they must have been forgettable because it seems I failed to take a photo of them.

This meal was just another example of the fact that in restaurants, it only takes one winning player to fill the seats. I just didn't think it would be chicken. It's one of my least favourite meats because I find it picket fence - basic and bland. I don't mind being wrong, and in the case of La Brasserie's chicken, I really, really was.